The hours dragged on so slowly that they never seemed to come to an end. Night was falling. The lamp was lit in the next room. The street door was locked.... What was that? The slamming of it resounded as if a lid had been banged violently on a giant box. And we are all sitting in the box and waiting helplessly for our fate to be decided out there. As long as the house doors were open the houses along the street seemed to hold each other by the hand, and if one had got into trouble the slightest movement would have been enough to warn the others. That is so no longer. When the doors are shut the houses release each other’s hands and each is left to itself with its own misfortune. Out there in the dark threatening streets the stolen motors are racing to and fro without a stop, carrying treacherous plans, hostile orders, all over the town. And behind the doors no one is safe until these plans and orders have decided his fate. It was just before midnight when the bell rang in the ante-room. Its sound choked the breath in our throats. Zsigmondy went out to open the door. It was all right: only my brother Béla had sent me a message not to go out to-morrow till he had spoken to me. Then we retired for a restless sleep. A lamp was burning on the table of the night nursery; my bed was made, but I sat for a long time on its edge, waiting like a patient in the surgeon’s waiting room. There was a smell of printer’s ink somewhere: if only one could read in these times, I thought. There was a newspaper on the table. No, not that. I turned from it in disgust. I wanted to escape the present. How often have I found consolation in books during sad hours! But is there a book that could lull the present sorrows to rest? I remembered having read _Faust_ during a great storm at sea till the night had passed, and during an evil night of the war my mother and I had read _Toldi_ till the morning came. I wondered if to-day the armed knight could carry me off with him as he rides to Buda to fight a last fight for Hungary’s honour, to kiss faithfully great King Louis’s hand? I shook my head. Was there nothing? _Hamlet_, with visionary raving eyes, came and went, but did not arrest me. _Niels Lyne_ and _The Idiot_, and rusty, armoured _Don Quixote_. A patrol passed under the window. A soldier pulled his bayonet over a corrugated shutter as if sharpening it for some future victim. The others laughed, then they went on. Silence followed, the silence of a huge wicked town that gapes.